First-Year Design Studio ARCH 101 Course Schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 12:20 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: Rand Hall
Professors: Val Warke and
Mark Morris Prerequisites: None; enrollment limited to architecture majors.
Course Overview: This semester will entail a journey: one that implicates new skills and techniques, that provokes unforeseen and unforeseeable ideas, and that reveals and suggests a variety of social operations. But the journey will be unlike any other you may have encountered in an academic situation: straight paths will be consistently interrupted by irregular bumps and meanders.
The topic that will drive the semester both as metaphor and device is the 'Archgipelago,' and it will serve to introduce the following themes that will be elaborated throughout the first semester: De-familiarization, Abstraction, Space, Speculation, Internal Dialog, External Dialog.
The Studio encompasses a broad skill-set. Freehand writing, drafting, and orthographic projection will be introduced (paralleling those skills developed in ARCH 151) in addition to a variety of modeling strategies. Scale, proportion, ordering systems, sequence, and translations between two and three dimensions are key aspects of the course. 'Archipelago', as theme, also treats particular notions of site and narrative.
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The World We Make
AAP 111 Course Schedule: Fridays, 9:05 am - 9:55 am
Location: Kaufman Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall
Professors: 1st-Year Faculty from Architecture, Art, and Planning
Prerequisites: None
Course Overview:
This course offers AAP 1st-year students an introduction to the subjects, theories, and methodologies of the disciplines of art, planning, architecture, and landscape architecture. Examples drawn from a range of historical periods as well as contemporary practice highlight distinct processes of thinking and working in each discipline, as well as areas of intersection and overlap.
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Drawing I: Freehand Drawing
ARCH 151 Course Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:20 pm - 2:15 pm
Location: 2nd Floor of Rand, First-Year Studio
Professor: Manuel Antonio Colon-Amador
Prerequisites: Concurrent enrollment in ARCH 101 or permission of instructor.
Course Overview: This course explores the practice of freehand drawing and emphasizes the use of the line. It serves as an introduction to visualization and representational skills necessary to be able to communicate spatial and architectural ideas. Exercises are intended to develop the student’s ability to draw from life and from memory and to comprehend the reciprocal relation between representation and the act of seeing. Through the understanding of the line as a means of graphic expression, visual judgments are made in drawings as abstractions involving selection and interpretation.
Emphasis is on practice and precise observation. The goal is to develop and improve hand-eye coordination and to develop a consciousness of “line” as interface between solid and void; precise, clear, and consistent but varied in weight and thickness. Required are discipline, concentration and an inquisitive spirit; a balance of “exactitude winged by intuition” (Paul Klee)
Course discussions focus on use of technique as a means to question the conceptualization of space. The exercises relate the broader subject of drawing to principles of conventional architectural drawing by examining the operation of different types of drawing. Line placement and quality, projection and positioning of view and viewer are recurrent themes. The course opens students to various representational opportunities through exercises: drawing in the field, in the studio, drawing from slides, and drawing in the sketchbook. Lecture content includes an introduction to the use of lineweight, profile and contour, and an introduction to perspective.
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History of Architecture I
ARCH 181
Course Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: 157 East Sibley Hall
Professor: Medina Lasansky
Prerequisites: None; introductory course.
Course Overview: The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to the history of the built environment. Through class lectures and discussion sections, we will explore the cultural issues surrounding the design, construction, and use of a variety of architectural sites and urban spaces from ancient Egypt to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to the way which historical sites have been rediscovered and reinterpreted at various points in history. We will pay particular attention to the physical and historiographic preservation and consumption of these sites. Students’ skills in visual analysis, historical research methods, and writing will be honed.
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